Recent Posts From This Author

Vaginas. I admit that being a healthy, testosterone-drenched male locked in a concrete water closet for the better part of two decades has, on occasion, left me pining for one. Or to be more accurate, wishing I came equipped with one. Especially at the start of my sentence would such a miracle mutation have been a welcome distraction. I’m sure I would have locked my cell door and never come up for air. But lately, two books travelling the hype-circuit have me wondering whether being an owner-operator of that most feminine of charms is really all it’s cracked up to be. (Sorry folks — now you know why they won’t let me out.)

In Vagina: A New Biography, writer Naomi Wolf’s probing introspective on the man-world’s second-favourite body organ has resulted in nothing less than a feminist fatwa. Apparently the problem lies with her assertion that the “gateway to, and medium of, female self-knowledge and consciousness” lies at the centre of a woman’s “Goddess-shaped hole.” I don’t know what the big deal is. For those of us who take our marching orders from a cigar-shaped dictator, Wolf’s claim that human consciousness springs from between the legs and not the ears hardly seems like an epiphany. How else do we explain the Kardashians? But maybe Wolf’s point would have been more palatable if she had just followed the timeless writer’s creed: show, don’t tell. I mean, it worked for Madonna — and she’s still on Shere Hite’s Christmas mailing list.

But if you think a photo-free book on female genitalia raised a few claws, try being the girl who played with gendercide. In her latest offering, The End of Men, Hanna Rosin stuffs her Manolo Blahniks squarely into that other celebrated female hole — her mouth — by framing male kindness as weakness. You would think that two world wars would have instructed womenfolk on just how touchy the y-chromosome gets when someone questions our testicular fortitude. Yet, despite the evocative title, Rosin’s book devotes most of its ink to how women have become the new caretakers of male power — instead of explaining how having a boss with a womb might actually give birth to a better world. That’s unfortunate. Because, if ever there was a topic that would benefit from a good soccer-cleat-style drubbing, it would be the legacy of male power. Especially in the house of detention.

When female prison guards started jangling their keys in Canadian male penitentiaries more than 30 years ago, it was a very big deal. Human rights legislation might have got them through the front gate, but it sure didn’t get them their own change room, or washroom or even the room to breathe.

“When I started here in ’79, the male officers were worse than the inmates,” a female keeper once told me. “They taped condoms to my locker door, and there were lots of nasty names behind my back. I even had my tire slashed once.” Then she started bodybuilding — back before anyone knew much about steroids. “I got huge — and ripped. Pretty soon they knew that messing with me was a big mistake. I’d break their f—in’ jaw.” Even 25 years later, the thousand-yard stare of this lady linebacker told me that her model of conflict resolution probably hadn’t graduated to rock-paper-scissors. But if both Rosin and Wolf are right, it appears that the days of women gladiators in the Big House may have finally run their course. In celebration, I offer my own Blackwell’s list of stylish suggestions for the woman who likes to lock up men:

1. It’s not what you put in your mouth. Nothing ruins a great Revlon #10 red like language that turns the air blue. Maybe it’s a residual war-wound from the 40-year fight women have waged for equality, but the filthiest mouths in the clink do not belong to the drug-detection dogs. If your dialogue truly needs an exclamation point, ladies, try something other than the exhausted Anglo-Saxon favourites. Old Bette Davis movies can help.

2. Lose the jackboots. The 21st-century empress need not be naked. But she will earn more male respect with a garment that reminds them of mom. Take a lesson from Elizabeth II, girls. The figurehead of Europe’s most powerful army has no problem flashing floral prints in public. The only thing commando garb ever commanded was contempt. Just ask Omar Khadr.

3. Girl power rocks. Feminism and femininity don’t have to be mutually exclusive options. I think that’s what Naomi Wolf was trying to tell us all — in her really confusing way. For all of history women have had tremendous power over — and the respect of — men. But it was never because you could bring down a sabre-tooth tiger faster than we could. At 110 pounds, my wife can wrap me around her little finger and make me crawl. I don’t know how she does it. But she does. It’s the ace up every girl’s sleeve that’s kept them going since the day Adam blamed Eve. Play it.

And if Hanna Rosin is right and men are as done as a Members Only jacket, then I have but one request for the more intuitive half of the human race. Please use your clout to abolish all those online male enhancement ads. We’re already the balder, fatter, and die-sooner sex. Finding out we’re not hung feels a little bit like overkill.

I.M GreNada is the pen name of a Canadian prisoner who has been serving life for murder since 1994. The people he writes about are real, but their names have been changed. You can read more about him at theincarceratedinkwell.ca.

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the “X” in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.